Are you a parent who panics the moment their child has been told they need to be more ‘physically active’ and take up a sport of some sort?

Well, there’s no need to be worried, your child doesn’t need to be sporty to be fit! Children often think that being active is all about the P.E they do at school, or what their ‘sporty’ peers can do when in fact it’s nothing like that at all.

School P.E has a particular curriculum that has been set by the government which is often out of date. How many of you have had P.E tasks from school that requires your child to make a ‘Star’ shape or ‘Pike’ shape with their body?

Seriously, when on earth are we going to do that in everyday life activities? You may need to be able to do these moves if you want to be a gymnast or dancer but to just be physically active all your body needs to do is move the way it was born to move. It’s not complicated, we do it automatically every day without ever thinking about it, we’ve learnt this from the moment we were born, its ingrained and bursting to get out even more.

We need to show our children that being physically active doesn’t mean they have to be good at various team sports activities, catching a ball or running fast.

They can be physically active by simply walking, jumping on a trampoline, balancing on a wall, running around the playground or by doing some simple exercises at home and literally just playing.

If your child needs to add more activity into their lives, or you would like them to be more physically active then think outside the box and don’t automatically start searching for a local team sport for them to join.

A good place to start would be by looking at what your local community centre or village hall has on their timetables, not only would you probably find a Fitness professional already teaching adult classes there, but you may also find a fitness for kids’ class already happening and you just don’t know about it yet.

Your local leisure centre or gym may have some Junior Gym sessions on offer as part of your membership or one that you can just pay as you go for.

Quite often there’s a lot more out in your community than you think, many small businesses don’t have the excess funds to advertise and they rely on ‘word of mouth’ and the usual social media channels of Facebook and Instagram. They don’t always rank high on google search because they may not have all the right CEO or Buzz words to feature on the first page and some may not even have a website at all.

Small local businesses really do have a passion for what they do and if kids health and fitness is ‘their thing’, then I know that you’ll be surprised as to how awesome the coach/teacher is with the  kids and how they will truly have a positive impact on your child’s journey of a lifetime.